Funding profile · Regenerative medicine

Trestle Biotherapeutics

A preclinical bioengineered kidney company with no Form D on record. The largest documented sum is a federal prize, and the three venture databases that track it disagree with one another about everything else.

$1.00MKidneyX Artificial Kidney Prize Phase 2, June 2023, non-dilutive
$125KY Combinator, Winter 2021, the only private check with a number attached
$1.12MTotal raised per PitchBook; CB Insights says $1.13M; Tracxn says $125K
0Form D offerings filed with the SEC since founding in 2020

Data as of September 23, 2026. Company-reported and database-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
Mar 2020 University spin-out Not disclosed None named PitchBook
Jan to Mar 2021 Y Combinator, Winter 2021 $125,000 Y Combinator Tracxn, PitchBook
Apr 2021 Seed, recorded by CB Insights as a convertible note Not disclosed One venture firm, unnamed, located in Washington state CB Insights
Dec 2021, Jan 2022, Mar 2022 Two early stage VC events and one accelerator event Not disclosed None named PitchBook
May 25, 2023 Wellcome Leap HOPE performer Not disclosed Wellcome Leap Company release
Jun 12, 2023 KidneyX Artificial Kidney Prize, Phase 2 $1,000,000 HHS and the American Society of Nephrology Public record
Sep 20, 2024 Early stage VC Not disclosed None named PitchBook
All rounds Investors named anywhere n/a Y Combinator, Draper Associates, Axial, C3 Ventures, KidneyX, plus unnamed angels PitchBook

What the filings show

Trestle Biotherapeutics, Inc. · Form D · none on file

Company search
EDGAR company search for Trestle, form type D, returns four filers: Trestle Financial LLC, Balincan USA, Trestle Partners I LP and Trestle Partners II LP. None is this company.
Full text search
15 hits for the phrase Trestle Biotherapeutics, all inside filings by other issuers.
Reading
No Regulation D offering has been noticed since the company was founded in 2020.
Run
SEC EDGAR, September 23, 2026

Frazier Lifesciences Acquisition Corp · Form 10-K · filed Mar 25, 2022

Relevance
Names Robert F. Baltera as co-founder and executive chairman of Trestle Biotherapeutics since April 2020, while an entrepreneur in residence at Frazier Life Sciences, Seattle.
Also named
Krishna R. Polu, nephrologist, listed as an adviser to Trestle.
Filing
SEC EDGAR, CIK 0001828326

Palisade Bio, Inc. · Form DEF 14A · filed Apr 29, 2026

Relevance
Baltera’s director biography still lists Trestle Biotherapeutics among the boards he serves on, which is the most recent dated evidence that the company is a going concern.
Filing
SEC EDGAR, CIK 0001357459

Reading the filings

  1. The largest number is a prize, not equity.Of the $1.12M to $1.13M that PitchBook and CB Insights report, $1,000,000 is the June 2023 KidneyX award. Subtract it and roughly $120,000 to $130,000 of private money is documented anywhere, which is the size of one Y Combinator check. About 89 percent of the traceable capital is non-dilutive.
  2. No Form D is not the same as no money.A company can sell securities under Section 4(a)(2) and file nothing. Priced rounds, notes and SAFEs raised that way leave no federal trace. The gap means the record cannot be checked, not that the record is empty.
  3. Three databases, three different companies.Tracxn: $125K, one round, three investors. CB Insights: $1.13M, five rounds, 11 investors. PitchBook: $1.12M, eight deals, 14 investors, six employees. They cannot all be right, and with no Form D there is no primary document to settle it.
  4. The chairman is the strongest financial signal in the file.SEC filings place Baltera as co-founder and executive chairman since April 2020 and as an entrepreneur in residence at Frazier Life Sciences in Seattle. CB Insights separately records an April 2021 convertible note from an unnamed venture firm located in Washington state. The databases do not name the firm, so the two facts sit next to each other without being joined.
  5. Capital against ambition.Six employees and roughly $1.1M on the record, against a program to build implantable human kidney tissue. Its own partner is the yardstick: Humacyte was founded in 2005 and its first FDA approval came in December 2024, 19 years later, on far larger capital, for a blood vessel rather than an organ.
  6. Two years of silence.The last financing event in any database is dated September 20, 2024. The last company announcement is dated March 6, 2025. No Series A has been announced, and no Form D has appeared.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Product None. Preclinical tissue, no IND announced, no registered trial, no FDA record. Public record
Revenue None disclosed. No customers, no licensing income reported. Not found
Non-dilutive KidneyX $1,000,000, June 2023. Wellcome Leap HOPE performer, May 2023, amount undisclosed. Public record
Intellectual property Inbound licenses from Harvard, Feb 8, 2022, and Kumamoto University, Feb 15, 2022. Four pending applications on the PitchBook profile, all first filed Oct 3, 2024. Foundational patents are held by Harvard and the General Hospital Corporation. Public record
Partner Humacyte research collaboration and material transfer agreement, Mar 6, 2025. No financial terms, no equity, no milestones disclosed. Company-stated
Headcount Six employees. PitchBook

What to watch

  • A Form D, which would be due within 15 days of a first sale, or an announced Series A.
  • Whether the Harvard and Kumamoto licenses remain in force. Exclusive university licenses carry diligence milestones and annual fees.
  • A first in vivo result, which is what a Series A in this field would be priced on.
  • Any output from the Humacyte collaboration, and whether it converts into a commercial agreement.
  • Any dated sign of activity after March 2025.

The Trestle Biotherapeutics story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • VenoStent: Shared investor: C3 Ventures. A bioabsorbable polymer sleeve that a surgeon slips over a newly built dialysis fistula and leaves behind to dissolve
  • Nephrogen: Similar focus. A five person New York company engineering a way to get genetic medicine into the kidney, run by a computational biologist who carries the disease he is trying to cure
  • Volumetric Biotechnologies: Also in Industrial Bio. A Rice University spin-out that printed a hydrogel air sac able to oxygenate flowing blood, sold to 3D Systems in 2021 for a headline $400 million, and watched the
  • Cytera CellWorks, now Mytos: Also in Industrial Bio. A London company that builds machines to grow human cells without a human touching them

Sources

  1. Public recordEDGAR company search and full text search for Trestle BiotherapeuticsSEC · Sep 23, 2026
  2. Public recordFrazier Lifesciences Acquisition Corp annual reportSEC Form 10-K · Mar 25, 2022
  3. Public recordPalisade Bio, Inc. proxy statementSEC Form DEF 14A · Apr 29, 2026
  4. Public recordArtificial Kidney Prize Phase 2 winning solution pageKidneyX, HHS and ASN · 2023
  5. DatabaseCompany profile, deal timeline, investor list, patent list, headcountPitchBook · accessed Sep 23, 2026
  6. DatabaseFinancials page: total raised, round list, investor countCB Insights · accessed Sep 23, 2026
  7. DatabaseFunding rounds and investors pageTracxn · accessed Sep 23, 2026
  8. IndependentTrestle Biotherapeutics Wins Prestigious KidneyX PrizeBioSpace · Jun 12, 2023
  9. CompanyTrestle Biotherapeutics Joins the Wellcome Leap HOPE ProgramBusiness Wire · May 25, 2023
  10. CompanyTrestle Bio Announces Research Collaboration with HumacyteBusiness Wire · Mar 6, 2025
  11. LicensorHarvard licenses kidney engineering technology to TrestleWyss Institute and Harvard OTD · Feb 2022

Compiled from SEC, KidneyX and other public records, venture databases and published reports as of September 23, 2026. Form D notices report offerings under Regulation D; a company that raises under Section 4(a)(2) files none. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Trestle Biotherapeutics. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.